Just because the FBI is going to use 9mm doesn’t mean it’s going out. There’s tons of police departments that still field it. It’s a very effective cartridge particularly in 155 or 165gr and accuracy aside it has great street credentials.

I would like to know how it is REALLY performing compared to 9mm. I tried a couple of them, but went back to 9mm. Since 9s are performing well, at least in the gun press, I saw no real reason why it can be any better. WE should all know that 40s wear out guns faster, recoil a tiny bit more, and cost more to shoot that maybe there simply wasn’t a legitimate reason to create it. Just a sales tool by the anti-9mm crowd, that knew the 45 really isn’t that much better than a good 9.

raz-0

It performs as well as 9mm at least. The industry aims for a metric, so most of what is selling is hitting that metric, which is a large part of what has made 9mm a very good bang for the buck defensively. It wasn’t always this way. We are spoiled by modern offerings.

.40 exists because the FBI had issues with the lethality of their issued ammo way back when. They wanted 10mm, but it caused issues with a lot of agents being able to handle it at full power, and the packaging issues with a platform that could should it caused ergonomic issues for smaller agents. So they essentially commissioned the .40 since they were going to download the 10mm anyway. There’s no conspiracy as to why it exists. An organization that buys a lot of ammo wanted it to exist, so it did, end of story.

It doesn’t wear out guns quicker if they were designed for .40 from the start. Heck, even if they weren’t it often doesn’t wear them out quicker. With a few exceptions, when it does, the round count at which you see a difference exceeds what many (possibly most) people will ever put through an individual pistol.

Despite the FBI going back to 9mm, it sticks around for a number of reasons. It fills a role well in a number of shooting sports. It can be loaded to an extremely wide range of performance from 135gr to 200gr projectiles loaded from powder puff to some serious recoil. If you reload that’s extra useful. It also has a nice straight wall design making roll sizing possible without ill effect, and it has a nice beefy extractor groove, which means that if your brass gets a bit beat up, it’ll still work.